Socioeconomic impacts of resilience to seaport and highway transportation network disruption

Abstract

• An integrated transportation-socioeconomic impact model is developed and applied. • Aggregate and distributional impacts of port-transportation disruptions are simulated. • Resilience tactics can substantially reduce potential GDP losses. • Losses from port disruptions increase income inequality . • Port resilience tactics reduce inequality from port disruptions. An integrated transportation-socioeconomic model is developed to analyze the economic consequences of and resilience to seaport and associated transportation network disruptions. Since such disruptions can affect people in a region unequally, the model is constructed to analyze both aggregate economic impacts and impacts across socioeconomic groups. We illustrate the model’s usefulness in a simulated earthquake scenario affecting the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. Total GDP losses from port disruptions, highway transportation cost increases, and general building damages, working through regional and interregional supply-chains, are estimated at $24.2 billion in the Port Region and $30.2 billion in the U.S. as a whole. A combination of several resilience tactics is estimated to reduce GDP impacts by 41.3% in LA and 57.6% in the U.S. The distributional analysis indicates the extent to which lower-to-middle-income groups are more proportionally impacted by port disruptions and middle-to-higher-income groups are more impacted by building damages.